BittBox » Image Editor

Pixelmator Winners!

Jay Hilgert — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:21:51 +0000

Congratulations to honki, Caspian, and Maruis B. They were the 3 lucky winners of a shiny new copy of Pixelmator 1.5! I hope you all enjoy the software, and thanks to the Pixelmator team for a great product, and for making the giveaway possible.

onOne Sofware Releases “Liquid Resize” Demo

Jay Hilgert — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:06:46 +0000

Liquid Resize is a content aware image resizer that allows yo to resize images without the typical restrictions of the aspect ratio. You can download Liquid Resize as a standalone application for product review purposes from onOne Software, but in it’s final form, Liquid Resize is slated to be a Photoshop Plugin. (pricing not yet released) Even if you hate demo versions, the trail period is 3 months, and it’s fully functional, meaning you can save your images without watermarks and such.

[via: PhotoshopNews] [image by: bryce_edwards]

Liquid Resize is not unlike the online service Rsizr, but after playing around with it for a while, I can manage to get better results with Liquid Resize. I can also see how this would come in handy for web designers. For example, you already have your client-approved web design built and coded, then the client requests an an image to be replaced and it just won’t work without cropping. Liquid Resize could (but not always) come in handy.

Just like Rsizr, with Liquid Resize, you can ‘protect’ parts of the image from distortion in order to get your desired results.

Here’s a quick before and after that I played around with:

Aperture 2 Released: Only $199

Jay Hilgert — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:40:02 +0000

With all of the recent activity with Apple updates and software releases, this one caught me a little off guard. Apple has just released Aperture 2, and shaved a $100 off the price. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it used to be around $300) If you’re a Mac user and a Photographer, this is great news. Personally, I love Aperture for RAW image processing. I think I’m finally gonna buckle down and drop the cash for it this time. Can’t wait to see what’s new!

It also looks like Apple is making sure they take care of people who recently purchased Aperture 1.5 (Maybe they really did learn something from the whole iPhone-early-adopter situation). If you purchased Aperture 1.5 between January 1st, 2008 and March 14th, 2008, you can upgrade to Aperture 2 for $9.95. More info here.

If you bought Aperture before January 1st, 2008, your upgrade will be $99.

Use Camera Raw to Process Jpegs

Jay Hilgert — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:41:44 +0000

I’m pretty sure this is new to CS3 (please chime in if you have CS2, because I don’t) but you can now open jpegs with Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in. Camera Raw is essentially what the name suggests, a RAW image processor, built into Photoshop. CS3 now allows us to open jpegs in this neat little editor. You might ask yourself: “Why would I need to use Camera Raw? Why not just edit the image in Photoshop itself?” Well, maybe you don’t want to use Camera Raw, but it’s nice to know you have the option. Especially if you take a lot of pictures in jpeg format (or your camera doesn’t shoot RAW) and you just want to tweak your images without having to apply tons of adjustment layers to get what you want.

Click on Images to enlarge

To enable Camera Raw for jpegs, open preferences (Command/Control + K) and navigate to the File Handling section. Check the box next to “Prefer Adobe Camera Raw for JPEG files.” Notice that it says “Prefer.” For reasons unknown to me, Camera Raw won’t open every jpeg you ask it to. Don’t ask me why.

Now that you have your image open in Camera Raw, tweak away with ease. It’s like all of Photoshop’s adjustment options morphed into a slider, and now reside in a sidebar so you can tweak on the fly. Give it a try, and poke around your options.

One of my favorite features of Camera Raw is the “Lens Vignetting.” Play with 2 sliders and get a vignette in seconds, instead of having to fill a layer with black and then start masking to reveal the image. ( vignetting is the darkening of the corners on an image. Typically gives the photo an ‘older’ feel. Wikipedia info on vignetting if your interested >>) Once you’re done adjusting your image, click “Open Image” and you’ll be back in Photoshop.

Like I said earlier, you may or may not want/need to use Camera Raw for jpegs, its just nice to know your options ;)